What happens when a group of broadcast journalism students set out to inspect the public files at their local television stations?

Three out of four stations refuse to let their cameras in.

“Cleveland television stations,” one student said, “don’t like television cameras.”

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you’ve never heard of. Drawing the vast majority of its financing from big corporations, the group allows these firms to help write bills that it then secretly passes off to state legislators to get turned into laws.

Sounds like an Onion headline, but it’s not. Yesterday a U.S. appeals court struck down a ban on political advertising on public TV and radio stations. That means your local NPR and PBS stations could start airing all those nasty attack ads that clog up the airwaves in an election year.

Want to give the federal government and big companies new powers to spy on you?

You’re in luck: There's a bill for that. 

It's called CISPA — the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" — and it's a frightening piece of legislation. It could allow for a new online spying regime, letting Big Brother read, watch and listen to everything we do on the Internet.